News and Notes about Graphic Design and Libraries

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Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you’ve had a good week and have a lovely weekend ahead. Just a few notes from me today as this week has flown by. Lots of workshops, meetings, and on-the-fly design work that I should share in the not-too-distant-future. But today, let’s talk about Independent Bookstore Day!

Tomorrow, Saturday (April 28th) is Independent Bookstore Day! This is one of my favorite days of the year (really)! If your Saturday plans at all allow for it, get yourself to your favorite indie bookstore and enjoy the fun. There’s often author readings, music, and swag that you can only get on Independent Bookstore Day tomorrow. This year’s offerings look particularly awesome. A couple of years ago I got a wonderful pencil case illustrated with bookstore cats (which often have the best literary pun names).

But more than that, it’s a day to celebrate and thank your local independent bookstore. And I do hope there is one in your town. Indie bookstores really are so much more than bookstores. They are community centers and great places to find books you never knew you needed but speak to you. So, step away from your computer (after you finish reading this post, of course), put down your mouse for one-click ordering, and go to your local indie and support it. Indie bookstores really are magical.

I’m completely, utterly, 100% biased on this, of course, and really don’t care. I love indie bookstores. We buy our books at our lovely indie bookstore, Books on B, which is run by the ever lovely and wonderful Renee. I even got my library to okay purchasing the books for our popular reading collection through Renee’s store this year, which was another way to support our local community.

So go forth and discover your indie bookstore. You never know what great conversations about books you might have actually standing in a bookstore versus staring at your screen and what fabulous new worlds you might discover in a book you’d never have picked up without the recommendations of an indie bookseller.

And, you don’t have to take my word for it. Check out Chuck Wendig’s post on his love for indie bookstores. Or, of course, there is Neil Gaiman who wrote, “What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, full of discovery at your local indie bookstore, and come back refreshed to your work with new creativity and inspiration. I’ll be back soon. Allons-y!

Hello, dear readers! I was thinking that we all could use a little mid-week pickup and wanted to share some design inspiration and news as we barrel on towards the middle of September. I hope you and your loved ones are safe, you are able to use your time and skills to help where you can, and you have found ways for using your graphic design skills to help others.

In wonderful library news, my dean approved printing of two large welcome banners. I installed them at both our entrances and wanted to share. I’m rather happy with how they turned out.

In case you missed it, lovely September desktop wallpapers. There is no time like the present to make your desktop look lovely for autumn. I currently have the cutest desktop of all year with cats and foxes–love having a dual-monitor set-up for this (and the productivity, of course).

Also, who doesn’t get inspired by books? (I mean, that’s kind of a silly question for those of us in libraries.) So I wanted to share this lovely (truly!) list of books on type and lettering from The Well-Appointed Desk. More to add to my “to read” list.

I recently finished reading (and let’s be honest, drooling) over the beautiful work showcased in Infographic Designers’ Sketchbooks. If you haven’t viewed this book yet, I highly recommend it. It is a trove of inspiration for creating beautiful and effective infographics for so many different types of projects. Makes me want to sketch all day and redesign every report we put out for the library.

And finally, although I know we should all be good and eating healthy, sometimes you (okay, I mean “I”) just want a brownie. So I leave you with this amazing recipe from Joy the Baker for Thick S’more Brownies.

I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. You find time and inspiration to use your design skills to welcome and support everyone at your library. And you even find time to have a brownie or two (I won’t tell if you offer to share with me, too!). I’ll be back soon with more design news and notes. Allons-y!

At CSUEB, we start the fall quarter today and in honor of that I have three helpful resources: cheap textbooks, reference sites and the list universe. Today is all about useful reference sources that just happen to be found on the web.

Textbooks
Everyone knows how expensive textbooks are and how annoying it is to wait for the one copy to be returned to reserves so you can check it out for two hours. Been there, done that. So here is a cool article from Lifehacker about the best places to save money on textbooks. Really, do your friends, family and students a favor by sharing this article and the sites from the article. I have to add the site isbn.nu that my friend, Ruth, told me about in grad school. Also a great comparison shopping site for textbooks.

100 Unbelievably Useful Reference Sites
The title is from the actual post at Teaching Tips.com and not one I made up. A great list of reference sites on the web, some of which I’m sure you’ve heard of and others that might be new. A handy resource for all of us who work at a reference desk or in any other capacity where we are answering questions. The sites are divided into categories and I think it is cute that five sites are listed as “Librarian References”–obviously someone still has a limited idea about what is useful for librarians.

The List Universe
And, in my attempt to always have something fun in a post, I give you The List Universe. I happen to love lists and this site has a ton of them. But other than just being a place to spend time finding out random bits of information, it also is good for reference work and those annoying trivia games that some people find fun. So check it out; I’m not saying that all of it is great, but enough is to warrant a bookmark in del.icio.us.

Happy start of the Fall Quarter for CSUEB and happy Wednesday to everyone!